Pickup trucks at one time were used primarily as utility vehicles. However, they have recently become quite popular as passenger vehicles. Along with this popularity has come increasing attention to their appearance, as well as utility in transporting items.
A variety of pickup truck accessories are manufactured and widely available, a number of which are valued as much for their appearance as for their function. For instance, rollbars are often provided for the ostensible purpose of enhancing vehicle occupant safety during a rollover. However, rollbars are usually purchased primarily based upon aesthetic considerations, with only minimal consideration for safety enhancement.
Many pickup truck accessories, in fact, serve a dual purpose of improving appearance and providing utility. Headliners, light rails, running boards, tailgate protectors, decorative grills, and mud flaps are examples of such accessories.
Side rails are examples of pickup truck accessories providing both look and function. Conventional side rails are fixed along the top surfaces of the sidewalls at each side of a truck bed. They provide hand-holds for users of a truck while working in and around it, as well as convenient attachment locations for ropes and other tie-downs used to secure loads. If appropriately styled and finished, they also enhance the appearance of a pickup truck bed while providing these functional purposes.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional pickup truck 10 having a cab 12 and a pickup truck bed 14. The truck bed 14 has sidewalls 16, a front wall 18 and a tailgate 20. Conventional, prior art side rails 22 are mounted atop sidewalls 16 along their longitudinal length. Side rails 22 generally comprise elongated horizontal tubes which are vertically spaced above the top surface of sidewalls 16. They are supported at several locations spaced longitudinally along the length of sidewalls 16. The size, shape and appearance of side rails 22 are normally chosen with particular regard for the resulting overall appearance of the pickup truck.
In contrast to side rails and other pickup truck accessories mentioned above, many pickup truck accessories remain primarily functional in nature. Overhead utility racks are particular examples of such functional accessories. Such racks have typically been designed with little or no regard for appearance. They detract, often significantly, from a pickup truck's appearance as a passenger vehicle. They are also removable only with considerable difficulty. When removed from the truck, they require significant storage space. While removable and/or collapsible utility racks have been proposed, they have only reduced, rather than eliminated, the above drawbacks and disadvantages of such racks.
The present invention is a side rail apparatus which provides the aesthetic features of side rails which are desired by many pickup truck owners. In addition, the side rail apparatus, with very little effort, can be configured to provide the highly utilitarian function of an overhead utility rack for those infrequent times when such a utility rack is needed by a typical pickup truck user.